Federal threats to privatize U.S. Postal Service continue

The stability of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) hangs in the balance as President Donald Trump pushes for privatization or merging it with the U.S. Department of Commerce, despite the postal service being an independent federal agency.

The famous adage—“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”—has adorned the New York General Post Office since 1914, capturing the spirit of America’s mail carriers. Yet, the originators of this phrase could scarcely have envisioned a real-estate magnate turned reality television personality turned president threatening to auction off the entire institution to the highest bidder.

In keeping with the Trump administration’s blueprint, guided by the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page “Mandate for Leadership,” the postal service has been framed as an outdated “government monopoly” whose mission is no longer essential and whose losses should no longer be borne by the public. The president has reportedly called USPS “incompetent” and “untrustworthy.”

The remedy is to “sell off the post office and allow it to run as a private business,” opening core mail and package markets to full competition and ending congressional price and service controls, according to Dr. Parker Sheppard, a research fellow for The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis.

Congressional leaders have pushed back against the notion. Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD), in delivering the opening statement before the June 24 Subcommittee on Government Operations hearing to address the USPS restructuring efforts, has been a forceful voice in protecting America’s postal workers and the services it provides.

“The Postal Service has an immense duty dating back to its creation—it powers communities and businesses, it keeps Americans healthy, it reinforces democracy, and it bridges geographical, economic, and cultural divides,” Rep. Mfume said. “Importantly, its universal service obligation ensures equitable access to prompt, reliable and efficient mail services….”

At a March 23 rally in downtown’s Federal Plaza, Keith Richardson, president of the American Postal Workers Union Chicago Area Local 1, said, “We need to keep the Postal Service public. It belongs to the people—not to corporations. If billionaires get their hands on it, it won’t be around like it is now.”

“The postal service is worth fighting for,” said Mack Julion, assistant secretary-treasurer of the National Association of Letter Carriers and former president of Chicago’s Branch 11, at the same rally. “It’s not just about saving our jobs; this is a service that belongs to the American people. We deliver to every address, including 51 million households’ private carriers won’t touch.”

The USPS traces its origins to the founding of the United States, with Benjamin Franklin appointed as the first Postmaster General in 1775. The postal service was established as a public institution to unify the nation and facilitate communication and commerce. Its independence came nearly 200 years later.

On March 18, 1970, more than 200,000 postal workers—mostly letter carriers and clerks—walked off the job in the first major nationwide work stoppage by federal employees. In response, Congress passed the Postal Reorganization Act that August, which transformed the Post Office Department into the independent USPS.

Early on, enslaved Blacks played significant roles in mail delivery, though discriminatory laws barred non-white persons from carrying mail until 1865, despite the fact that nearly all were forcibly illiterate. Post-Civil War, African Americans gained employment opportunities in the postal service, despite facing violent backlash and legally mandated racial segregation.

William Cooper Nell became the first African American federal postal employee in 1863 when he was appointed as a clerk at the Boston Post Office—though some historians claim the abolitionist’s role may have come as early as 1850. In 1867, John W. Curry became the first African American letter carrier when he began working in the Washington, D.C., post office.

Stagecoach Mary Fields, who became the first African American woman star route mail carrier in the United States in 1895, was renowned for her steadfast commitment and fearlessness along Montana’s treacherous postal routes. Tasked with delivering everything from vital letters and government notices to parcels containing medicine, food, and supplies essential for remote settlers, Fields braved harsh winters, rugged terrain, and bandits, thanks to her exceptional gun skills and tenacity.

Henry W. McGee Sr. was appointed postmaster of Chicago in 1966, becoming the first African American to serve in that role in a major U.S. city. In 1986, Gloria Tyson Freeman, who began as a clerk in the 1960s, rose to become the first Black female postmaster of Baltimore, Maryland in 1986.

Appointed as Deputy Postmaster General in 2011, Ronald Stroman was one of the highest-ranking African Americans in USPS history. He played a key role in legislative affairs and strategy and later joined the USPS Board of Governors.

As early as 1960, USPS was the single largest civilian employer of Blacks in the United States, especially those without college degrees, contributing to the steady growth of the Black middle class. A decade later,  an estimated 150,000 Black men worked for the U.S. Postal Service in 1970.

To date, there are approximately 640,000 USPS employees nationwide—533,724 in full-time, permanent roles and 105,951 in part-time or seasonal positions. As one of America’s most diverse employers, 54 percent of its workforce comes from historically underrepresented groups: Black employees make up 30 percent, Hispanic 14 percent, and Asian 8 percent. Non-Hispanic White workers account for 46 percent of the workforce.

The postal service experienced its major financial challenges driven in part by a 2006 congressional mandate that required the agency to pre-fund retiree health benefits decades in advance. These challenges were further compounded by declining first-class mail volumes and increased competition from private delivery companies.

Between 2007 and 2016, USPS missed the required retiree health benefit payments totaling $33.9 billion, plus another $18.8 billion in normal-cost payments from 2017 to 2021—leaving an estimated $52.7 billion in unfunded obligations by 2021. By 2020, USPS was carrying $70 billion in unfunded retiree healthcare liabilities, with total pension and health liabilities reaching $120 billion, against much smaller assets.

The three-year COVID-19 pandemic also aggravated USPS’s looming financial problems. In addition, the frequency of email usage; the public service mandate to deliver to every address in the country six days a week, caps on postal rates, borrowing limits and restrictions that limited its ability to increase revenue, and the requirement to rapidly prefund retirees made it vulnerable to attacks from conservatives.

On May 6th, Trump appointed FedEx board member and former Waste Management Chief Executive David Steiner as the next Postmaster General and, according to a Washington Post report, the president instructed the U.S. Postal Service’s Board of Governors to vote in the affirmative. Three days later—May 9—the board followed through, and the executive became the nation’s 76th postmaster.

Since late 2024, Trump has mentioned three companies—FedEx, United Parcel Service (UPS), and Amazon—when discussing the privatization of postal operations. Amazon is the largest of the three companies, employing approximately 1.556 million people globally. Despite the representation of around 8,000 JFK8 warehouse workers by the Amazon Labor Union (now affiliated with the Teamsters) and a few smaller bargaining units, over 99 percent of Amazon’s workforce remains non-union.

UPS employs around 490,000 people globally, with nearly 330,000 of its U.S. package-car drivers, inside sorters, and clerks covered by the 2023-28 National Master Agreement with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. The Independent Pilots Association represents its 5,800 cargo pilots separately. The Air Line Pilots Association International represents approximately 5,800 FedEx Express pilots, but nearly all other FedEx employees, including ground drivers, sort-center staff, and dispatchers, are non-union.

Regarding the new postmaster, Rep. Mfume said, “I hope Mr. Steiner heeds our calls to protect the service that millions of Americans rely on to send and receive critical items—from financial statements and mail-in ballots to life-saving medicines and personal letters. In doing so, he must defend against any threats to the Service’s independence and ensure the Postal Service remains a public good—which will not be easy under this Administration.”

He also noted the former embattled Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, proposed rate hikes of postage that would “mark a 41.8 percent increase in the price of First-Class Mail Forever stamps since 2021—all while the Postal Service continues to serve the American public well below its 95 percent on-time delivery standard.”

During both the 2020 and 2024 presidential election cycles, Trump repeatedly portrayed the Postal Service as a weak link and accomplice in what he called a vast mail-ballot “scam.” On the Cleveland debate stage on September 29, 2020, he warned that sending out duplicate or misplaced ballots would create “a fraud like you’ve never seen,” insisting postal workers could not safeguard the vote.

During his first term,  in April 2018, Trump issued an executive order to establish a Postal Task Force aimed at evaluating the business model of USPS. He often tweeted complaints about the postal service’s financial situation, specifically accusing Amazon, owned by Jeff Bezos (with whom Trump frequently clashed), of exploiting the postal service. In June of that year, the Trump Administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) unveiled a government reorganization plan that included a proposal to restructure and eventually privatize the Postal Service.

The rhetoric escalated in 2024 when speaking to Real America’s Voice on September 14, then-candidate Trump claimed the agency itself had admitted it was “in bad shape” and predicted it would “dump millions and millions of ballots,” and hinted at suing USPS because it might “lose hundreds of thousands of ballots—maybe purposely.”

Opponents have decried the attacks. Privatizing the U.S. Postal Service would almost certainly shrink service, raise prices, and hollow out one of the nation’s largest union workforces. The postal service is legally bound to reach every address six days a week. Still, a private operator could pare delivery days, close small post offices, or refuse unprofitable periodicals and election mail, critics of the plan often point out. 

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) warns a move toward privatization would “harm the national economy while devastating many vulnerable households and communities, notably homebound seniors, people in rural areas, and residents of low-income urban neighborhoods,” while giving competitors a windfall for shedding those obligations.

In EPI’s report, “The War Against the Postal Service,” the research group also noted, “Career jobs in the Postal Service are good jobs for workers without bachelor’s degrees. Postal workers are better compensated than many other workers with similar education, years of experience, and hours worked. … The corporations that stand to gain will do so not because they are more efficient than the Postal Service, but because they can shed public service obligations and pay their workers less.”

Trump’s reform efforts come at a time when violent attacks on U.S. postal workers appear to be on the rise. The Government Accountability Office found about 600 letter carrier robberies in fiscal 2023, nearly seven times more than in 2019, along with around 400 assaults and 200 burglaries. However, the Postal Inspection Service notes there has been an 845 percent rise in robberies since 2019, driven by armed thieves targeting “arrow keys” used for mailboxes.

Chicago has emerged as one of the hardest-hit cities. Robberies of postal employees in the city rose from two in 2018 to 32 in 2022 and 57 in 2024, giving local carriers one of the highest victimization rates in the nation. Recent cases underline the danger: on June 11, 2025, four gunmen in Englewood robbed a 20-year-old carrier of her arrow key; on Feb. 11, 2025, two masked men in Washington Park brandished a handgun at a carrier and fled with the key.

In July 2024 Octavia Redmond, was shot and killed while delivering mail in the West Pullman neighborhood. A 15-year-old was reportedly charged with the crime. In October 2018,  Kierra Coles, a 26 year old pregnant letter carrier, vanished from her Chatham neighborhood while in uniform and enroute to work. She was three months pregnant at the time and has yet to be located.

Outside of Illinois, on July 6, 2025, three youths in Glen Allen, Va., held up a carrier at gunpoint for mailbox keys; and on Jan. 2 of this year, a 36-year-old Manhattan letter carrier was fatally stabbed while on duty in Harlem.

Consumer complaints  also fuel calls for intervention. In Chicago, for example, the Charles A. Hayes branch at 7436 S. Exchange Ave in South Shore has been rated 1.5 stars out of five by 58 postal customers. It has been cited for the slow delivery or missing mail; poor customer service; and alleged hostile employees. A call to a branch manager went unreturned by the Crusader deadline.

“Unprofessional Staff. Loses key every 2-3 months. It’s just sad how that place is being operated,” wrote reviewer Charles H. in May 2025.

“They need a whole new staff from management to workers. Very unprofessional, rude, they don’t know how to tlk [sp] to people. They retaliate against you for reporting them when not delivering mail and packages,” wrote Keisha H. in August 2024.

Such grievances have not gone unheard by federal officials and add fodder to the president’s plan to reform the agency. “Collectively, I think we can all agree that there must be a better way to address the frustrations of our constituents, of fellow Members, and of critical partners, and to build back Americans’ trust in the Postal Service,” Mfume told his colleagues.

“As we partner to remedy those frustrations, let’s also make clear that the Postal Service is not for sale, not to be sidelined, and not to be weakened. It is a pillar of American life, and we owe it to the American people to protect and improve it,” he said.